ABSTRACT

The nineteenth century, which was keenly aware of the dangers of arbitrary power, had a favourite device for avoiding them, namely competition. The evils of monopoly were still familiar from tradition. The Stuarts, and even Elizabeth, granted profitable monopolies to courtiers, the objection to which was one of the causes of the Civil War. In feudal times, it was common for lords of the manor to insist upon grain being ground in their mills. Continental monarchies, before 1848, abounded in semi-feudal restrictions on freedom of competition. These restrictions were made, not in the interest of either producers or consumers, but for the benefit of monarchs and landowners. In eighteenth-century England, on the contrary, many restrictions survived which were inconvenient both to landowners and to capitalists—for example, laws as to minimum wages, and prohibition of the enclosure of common lands. In England, therefore, until the Corn Law question, landowners and capitalists, on the whole, agreed in advocating laissez-faire.